Well, for a rollup this release is very dissappointing. Especially as we are now looking at over a year before the next release of Media Centre (rumoured to be built into the Vista Operating System). First off, installing this update hosed our two demo units, and only worked on fresh build systems. We had to rebuild both test units, and reimage after installing this update - just to make sure we could restore them if the worst happened. Added to this, there are a couple of glitches with graphics but nothing major - so far. The biggest plus is the addition of DVB-T radio playback (at frigging last!).

Ok, until today, I trusted Microsoft Anti spyware beta.... That was, until I ran a scan today: As you can see, its reported a positive hit. However, if you look on my blog, you will see the hit is a program that I've written (as in, I KNOW the program, I WROTE the program, and as such, I KNOW its safe). Hmm. Positive hit. Wonderful. Ok, so what does it mean that the scan is MISSING?????

Ok, those of you that have known me for some time, know I've been toying with doing this for a REALLY REALLY REALLY long time :) What am I talking about? A robotic mower :) Yes, you read that right. A robotic mower. But not just a 'stick it in the garden and it muddles about' type of afair, but something with REAL brains, and the ability to map gardens, detect obsticales, and REMEMBER the layout etc. Oh, the brain will be a Via ITX board, and I'm planning on doing all the integration using USB interfaces (FTDI 245 probably) to Atmel ATMega AVR Micro controllers :) More to follow!

Ive updated AAmp a little; added bubble hints to the tray icon that shows what is playing, and what is coming next. Thoguht I'd fixed the overrun on pause bug, but don't appear to have now I've got a MASSIVE playlist running :p Must allow saving / loading of playlists...

Ok, so I'm messing with Fedora Core 4, with the thoughts of putting it on a beblu unit... Installation went smoothly, no problems what so ever. Post installation config on the other hand isn't simple - the graphics card is only detected as a VESA compatible, not the true S3 Unichrome that it is - so no acceleration etc. Time to get digging :)

I've been digging through backups today, restoring Microsoft SQL databases after managing to shaft my SQL server. And I found something I'd forgotten about .. When I was learning to program in Delphi, one thing I tried was writing a screensaver - as I was unable to come up with anything graphically interesting, I found a set of 'Matrix' style text - and made a Matrix screensaver :) Download it, and check it out [Download file] 500Kb Uncompressed - drop it into the Windows installation directory, then you can select it as usual in Display Properties -> Screensaver.